Letter the eleventh: where's my free news?

This one isn't really crazy but it's the principle of it.

[PUBLISHER],
Though the [NEWSPAPER] is published only twice per week I would hope that the website woudl be kep up-to-date. I have been viewing the same 'headlines' for the past 2 weeks*, i.e. latest website entries (Sept. 11-Sept 24 '09). The same with the Obituary Listing (Obituary marked Oct 9, 09 has listed obituaries from October 2 and no further). How can the obituaries be marked October 9th, when today is only October 8, 09. ??
Inconsistency, to say the least.

I once had the [NEWSPAPER] delivered to my address a few years back. Because the '[CLEVER DIMINUTIVE FOR THE NEWSPAPER]" was cutting back on their subscribers, they deemed it unecessary not to have home delivery at my address in [LOCATION], because they considered me in the 'boonies.' That's fine if they wished it this way. ... but at least try to keep the website updated so that we would have the most recent local/state news and the most recent obituaries in the [REGION].
Thank you for your time.
[Signature]
[CUTESY INSPIRATIONAL QUOTE SIGNATURE]



The journalist sending this said, as far he knows, no one has been persuaded to unsubscribe because it's too far away. In fact, the paper is delivered by the U.S. Postal Service so they don't care how far away someone is. "Furthermore, cutting back on subscribers seems like stupidest effing idea I've ever heard," the contributor said. "If that were a policy, the person who agreed to it needs a pica pole up the ass. Sideways."

So, says the Leditor Editor, this person is complaining about a dearth of free hyperlocal news because the newspaper allegedly persuaded this person not to pay for it?

Yes, how dare you not give your product away for free for people who don't want to pay for it.

I believe that online is the future. For starters, we'll stop killing trees like they're zombies. It is important for sites to be fresh or that "e-newspaper" is going to be left by the wayside.  At the same time, we have to stop giving them away online.  Right now, advertising on paper is still what business want and if we aren't getting smushed dead trees with ink on them out of the metal boxes, we aren't getting paid. That department store has better chances of someone idly flipping through their glossy circular than any company hoping someone will click the flashing ad in the corner and poke around their site.

When it comes to national news, the physical ad people become a problem because the necessity is for people to be on the site and it would be great if all the ads and viewers were there. This is because, if news isn't posted on the site as it happens some blogger is going to have it everywhere or an online only news site will have it and your version in print the next day is beyond yesterday's news.

With a hyperlocal, where else are they going to get it?  That big city daily doesn't care about the garden club or [SHOT!] JV Football (NOT THE VARSiTY). Until the industry finally gets completely into the late 20th century in 2024, we need to squeeze every penny out of the printed page. You can have a Web site with digital frilly edges and shiny things but don't give away the hyperlocal news.

If they don't like it, tough. It's not like it's not over $2.  If you have concerns about your hippie trees, the Arbor Day Foundation will give you some to plant for a donation.

*As an aside, the contributor said the complaint had to have come during the site's redesign and the naming of new people to update the site. At the time, there was a message that the new site was under construction and those issues just didn't make it online. Only two issues had been missed since the relaunch and that was because those new people forgot they volunteered themselves for the duty. That happened after this e-mail was sent.

Thursday Deaths, vol. 1

We're going to deviate a little bit here because, content is still slim. Really, guys: There's nearly 60 of you in the Facebook group (and most of you are journalists) and there aren't any strange letters/e-mails/whatever coming to your media organization?

For a couple of six Thursdays, I'm going to do Thursday Deaths. One of the contributors, who is running the Facebook fan page, used to work at a newspaper where it was his job to put in obituaries when he worked on the weekend. As a rule, the funeral homes sent obits to the obituary-only e-mail account with the name of the deceased as the subject. At some point, the account started getting spam.  Here's his take on the poor souls that  bit the dust that he  posted to his Facebook in early 2008.

I'm sorry to say that we must now give our condolences to the families of:
• Blue-pill world news;
• Amaze the girls with your gigantic tool;
• Make your own home sex video, and show off your new big ...;
• An incredible huge schl0ng is no longer an impossibility; and
• Increase by inches today


These folks were truly working stiffs. Now they're just stiff. There is no word as to when the rock-hard memorial stones will be erected.
May they rest in peace.

letter the tenth: flux capacitor needed for recongn ... recongin ... aw, forget it

This leditor came to a sports editor in Virginia whose paper comes out twice a week. There is still a chance that a midweek editions are floating around, which not only have the date on them but have either "MIDWEEK EDITION" or "WEEKEND EDITION" on the top of the front page in all caps, early Friday mornings.

Grab a bottle of Journo Juice (tequila) and a shot glass.

We're drinking every time the high school's name comes up.

[IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER] Monday: Why don't you do an article on the [SHOT!] JV Football team as they are 4-2 for the year. It would be great for the guys that has worked very hard everyday on the practice field as well as on Wed.(Gamed nights) to get some recongntion since they are have a pretty good year so far. Nothing has been said about the [SHOT!] JV team. We need to support all of our teams in [THE MUNICIPALITY] not the Varsity. The [SHOT!] JV Football team deserves this recognition.

Friday, 8:42 a.m.: Just look today's newspaper and again nothing was mentioned about the [SHOT!] JV football team. Yeah we did lose to [OTHER HIGH SCHOOL ... SHOT ANYWAY!] on Wed.. However our [SHOT!] JV played their hearts out on the field. The score ended up 51-40, I'm hoping that everyone in [THE MUNICIPALITY] will get to read an article soon about our [SHOT!] JV football players. They are 5-3 right now, but they are doing better than Varsity by far. Our [DRUNK YET?] JV football team needs to reconginzed for all their hardwork this football season.




This sports editor said the article was in the weekend edition and, on top of that, the [TAKE A SHOT FOR THE HELL OF IT] junior varsity team had not been ignored previously. They may not have gotten above the fold several photo treatment but they were in there.

I think this situation is easy to decipher: This person does not read the newspaper.  We all know those people. They know everything about current events and "what's really" going on and are the first to complain about a newspaper not having an article or not getting "the whole story." Then, when you question them about it, they backpedal to "Such and such told me and he/she takes the paper and it said. ..." Then you get the article in question and it doesn't say that at all. Or, better still, it's a leditor that actually gets to the OPINION page.

It reminds me of an e-mail I wish I still had. A former mayor sent me an angry e-mail with a laundry list of factual errors in my article and, as I went down the list, I came to the realization that she was mentioning things that weren't in the article at all. I e-mailed the former mayor back and, upon reading the article, agreed that the errors did not exist. That's it. No my mistake, no I'm sorry, no anything. I wonder how many people were told how horrible of a writer I was for getting the story wrong before the article was read.

But back to this angry sports fan. There could be another explanation for the disappointment in the sports story not being in the edition that came out BEFORE the game: She is a time traveler and we should be too.  You're right. How dare we not mention a sporting event on Wednesday in the previous Tuesday's paper? How are people supposed to know if it's worth going to the [SHOT!] JV game if we don't tell them the score of the [SHOT] JV game the day before? It was a close match but we should have known that people have far more important things to do than going to a losing game of the [SHOT!] JV Football team so we wasted their time by forcing them to sit through that losing game by not giving a detailed description of what took place at the [SHOT!] JV game from the future. Not the Varsity. NOT THE VARSITY.

Or maybe, on a Friday, you should look for the paper that not only says FRIDAY but WEEKEND EDITION.

And I think you all need to send in more leditors so newspaper readers like these can be reconginzed for all their hardwork for writing them.

[SHOT!]

letter the ninth: XOXOXO, a reader

When I think about it, I'm going to get this leditor from Michigan framed and keep it at my desk. It's just so magical. The only thing that could made it better is if it were written on Hello Kitty stationery in cursive with hearts dotting every i and sealed with a kiss. It warms my heart to see how much a reader truly cares.

As a warning to all of you journalists and readers with virgin eyes (none of you), this letter is a bit graphic in its description of the love for the newspaper.

Hey Editors publishers + other assholes on Your (toilet) paper. Is your Dept as Fucked up as you All Are.?

Your paper stinks +  you all Suck, + Fuck (each other.)


You should be printing HorseShit News to match your Brains, you motherfuckin Assholes!!!!!



That's five, count 'em, five exclamation marks. You know this person means business.

Here's my response on behalf of all of teh newz:
In some cultures, newsprint is a delight for the bottom and if your paper stinks, you should try reading the business section before using it to clean up your "business." If the department isn't as fucked up as we are, it needs to hang out with us and a bottle of tequila on a Friday night.  Speaking of Friday nights, in general, we do like to suck, + fuck (but doing it to each other could lead to awkward Monday mornings unless we can blame it on the tequila).  Also, you should have figured out by now that we print BULLshit News, which actually matches the brains of some of us (Or at least our stories after tequila). The HorseShit News only comes out during Derby season.  Also, what happens with us, your mother and assholes is strictly between us and the tequila (your mother's really good).

XOXOXO

letter the eighth: not a prostitute

This one is not a leditor per se but a story from a contributor about an attempt to submit a letter to the editor that went horribly awry. I'm a little skeptical. At the same time, from working in a newsroom, I also see this happening. Either way, I found the mental image of this funny.

Since I find it funny and I need more content, here's a story. And I need more content. Yep, I'm going to beg for it like not a prostitute till the inbox is overflowing.



TO THE LEDITOR:

I used to work in a two-story newspaper building and, because of how customer needs were set up, some of them were sent upstairs into the newsroom.  As some of you know, you really don't want readers in the newsroom.  Ever. They tend to be crude, dirty and sometimes deviant. And I haven't even described the people yet.

As you also know, you also don't want the customers in the newsroom because some of them are a verb short of a nut graf.

One day, we get a woman upstairs who immediately demands submission of a letter to the editor or an article written about her. She had been in our police blotter a while before when she was charged with prostitution, solicitation and trespassing.  I found this to be a good time to start calling sources so I wouldn't have to deal with it.

I'm not saying she was a prostitute but, from how she was dressed that day, I could see how an officer could be confused. Her story was that she was behind a gas station trying to get $5 for gas or something and said the cop asked her what she would do for $5 and then she said ... and this is me tuning out the conversation in front of me.

Our managing editor was in the process of leaving the office early and ran into the scene. The person dealing with the woman and had no idea what to do immediately said, "Here is our managing editor," and quickly retreated.

The woman said she wanted to clear her name. He felt the situation was out of his control, tried to get her to understand there was really nothing we could do and then tried to dump her off on someone else since he was going home. It would have been me, because she was arrested in my beat but, luckily, I moved on to my next call: a state police officer who was about to retire.

As this was going on, I noticed that she had two very large sheets of paper. She unfurled them and showed them to the editor. She had very, very ornate handwriting so it looked like she was trying to hand him the Declaration of Independence.

I got the beep and started to leave a message and it got out of hand in the background quickly.  I paused.

"Run my letter! I am not a prostitute!"

I missed what boss man said but it finally pushed her over the edge.

“I'm gonna go postal; I'll make the massacre at Virginia Tech look like a kindergarten!”

She turned and started to run.  Someone was coming up the stairs and she nearly pushed that person down in the process.

While everyone was still frozen by the WTF-ness after she left the room, I didn't skip a beat.

“As I was saying, we have heard that you were retiring. ...”

Our editor called the polce, we conveniently got her address from the blotter and mailed her a letter from our lawyers saying not to come to the building again.

Although I'm certain he had to have heard it in the voicemail, the state trooper didn't mention the yelling at all when I talked to him.

I wish I could share the leditor but, sadly, she took ye olde leditore with her.

BONUS! CELEBRITOR FOUND! or "It stinks"

I'm not going to say where this was from but you can find it on Google if you look hard enough.

Newspapers verify the sender of letters before they are run, if you didn't know, and it's on their site.  I'm calling this a total confirmed. I also find confirmed, through this celebritor, that MiCHAEL BAY is indeed an "egomanical hack" (despite my moments of SQUEE! every time THE ACTUAL VOiCE ACTOR FROM THE 1980S CARTOON SPOKE AS OPTiMUS PRiME).

OK, from this point forward (maybe) I'm going to stop making fun of that guy's love of the lowercase i when writing in all caps. It's starting to annoy me even more just by doing it.

To the Editor:

The [NEWSPAPER]'s movie critic, [THE CRITIC], seems to be woefully out of touch with pop culture.

The "Transformers" movie's $155 million seven-day haul is the biggest non-sequel opening in box office history. Numbers like that usually mean positive word of mouth on the film is huge, and people are going back.

A friend of mine, Steven Spielberg -- he’s pretty smart about film -- said [THE CRITIC]'s review was idiotic. [THE CRITIC]'s a critic who actually reviewed his dislike for the director, rather then reviewing the movie, like his job description prescribes. [THE CRITIC] talks about the director being an "egomaniacal hack."  Well I don't believe I've ever had the pleasure of meeting [THE CRITIC], though it sounds like he knows me. If [THE CRITIC] actually did know me, he would find me to be a pretty down-to-earth, nice guy.

I implore the editor to give [THE CRITIC] a little relaxation and sunshine, clear his head, let him rediscover that movie-going is supposed to be a fun experience.

Maybe even help him get rid of his hatred.

Michael Bay

Director of "Transformers"

Los Angeles, Ca.




Teh haterz at teh newzpaperz, y they hatin'???/?

Is anyone else picturing Jay Sherman saying "Transformers" stinks every time the phrase "THE CRITIC" appears? You're welcome.

technical letter the seventh: CELEBRITOR!

I wish ... whoops, i capitalized an i there ... a copy of this letter was sent but, considering where this story came from and reading about some of his hissy fits, it's believable.

The person who submitted this used to work for a 40,000-circulation paper way outside of Chicago. Back when the first "Transformers" remake movie came out, their movie critic panned it. As I stated to friends back when it came out and when I totally excited about "G.I. Joe," if you grew up watching it, they were great. Both of those films felt like a blast. They weren't totally the same as the cartoons but you can't really go by the book for a concepts nearly 30 years old.  If you didn't watch them or were expecting it to be exactly like the cartoons or thought you were going to come out of it with a new sense of purpose in life, they sucked.

MiCHAEL BAY, of course, thinks his film was the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Apparently, he wrote a letter to this newspaper where he complained about "how unfair the review was and how his 'good friend' Steven Spielberg liked it," the contributor said.

I beg all of you, if you know where this leditor ... er ... celebritor is, send it in for us to see in all its glory and majesty because it's from MiCHAEL BAY. AND HE'S COMPLAiNiNG ABOUT A REViEW iN A 40K CiRCULATiON PAPER. "It wasn't exactly the 'Tribune,' " the contributor said.

I hope he used all caps in there. I need it to be.

If there are any other celebritors, send those along as well.  Speaking of submissions, along with the promised story for Monday, I have more submissions. KEEP THEM COMiNG.